Insight

GB Balancing Mechanism Summary – October 2018

Aurora’s Flexibility Market Summary provide a concise monthly review of recent events in key markets for flexible technologies. The initial focus is on the balancing mechanism and firm frequency response (FFR) markets with more ancillary services markets to be added over time.

Key highlights from the October report are:

The average short system price for October rose to £84.31/MWh, while the average long price dropped slightly to £45.54/MWh.

Bid and offer acceptance volume in October remained large at 1035 GWh and 994 GWh respectively, with CCGTs contributing 38% and 75% of the total bid and offer volumes.

As coal plants start to come online for winter, they played a larger role in balancing actions for October, comprising 7% and 10% of the total accepted bid and offer volumes.

With decreases in gas prices resulting in an 8% drop in average marginal costs to £85.65/MWh, trading hours and profits of gas recips recovered from their 13-month lowest levels in September.

Aurora’s latest Distributed and Flexible Energy Scenarios Report for H1 2018 presents Aurora’s central outlook for distributed and flexible energy alongside a number of plausible alternative scenarios – each of which provides an internally consistent view on market developments, deployment, and investment cases. This update also includes the addition of a new ‘High Interconnector’ scenario.

Aurora’s System performance report provides a monthly snapshot of key operating characteristics for the GB power system. Which fuels are most used? Which power plants most profitable? How would a change in the price of gas or coal impact the system price through the dispatch?